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Monday, March 19, 2012

Gutenberg Museum

The Gutenberg Museum is located at the center square in Mainz, Germany.

There are displays which explain the history of printing beginning with the Chinese, Japanese and Koreans and continuing into Gutenberg's printing press. There are also exhibits on book binding. It was fascinating to see Chinese wood blocks used for printing as well as writing on tortoise shells and bone. The Chinese invented movable type long before Gutenberg, but the thousands of characters required to create written Chinese made the invention impractical. Inside the museum there is a table which contains thousands of Chinese characters in movable type.

The Gutenberg Bible is the main attraction at the museum. There were also many books displayed in the museum on topics such as science, inventions, fairy tales and religion. The illustrations were beautiful.

Unfortunately photographs were not allowed inside the museum, so I am showing photos from the movable type benches outside the museum and photos I took of the postcards I purchased at the museum.

The book Breaking into Print: Before and After the Printing Press
by Stephen Krensky is the perfect companion to the Gutenberg Museum. It explains the history of printing beginning with the Chinese through Gutenberg's revolutionary printing press. It is written in story format with illustrations and a timeline.

* I did not receive any compensation for this recommendation. I'm just a homeschooling mom who has found many products that I like. If you're interested in the products I recommend on this blog I want to make it easy for you to find them. ** I am an Amazon associate and receive a small portion of the sales on orders made after clicking in from this site, which I promptly spend on homeschooling books and supplies for my children.

I wrote about homeschooling in Germany a little while back. The Germans tend to have a lot of questions about homeschooling and how it works since it is illegal here. Luckily there is a decent sized American community of homeschoolers here.

About Me

I am an American mother of three who spent six years living in Germany. Education has always been a primary focus for me. This blog is packed with fun educational activities for kids. Speed! is a skip-counting game I created in 2011 to help kids learn multiplication. In June 2012 my younger daughter was diagnosed with Leukemia, so that topic has quickly taken over a portion of this blog. You can reach me at
jmommymom @ gmail . com